Is the Whole Universe a Computer™?

About this episode

The episode explores whether the universe can be considered a computer and discusses philosophical implications surrounding this question.

" Is the whole universe a computer? ", ask Jack Copeland, Mark Sprevak, and Oron Shagrir in chapter 41 of the book The Turing Guide . They split this question in two, first asking whether the universe itself is a computer, then whether the universe could even be computed. These are lofty, unanswerable questions, sure, but they encroach on our territory — philosophy, automata, nonsense. So, in our usual reverent style and with attentive pacing, the three of us explore the paper, the questions, the answers they choose to highlight, and even share a few perfectly reasonable answers of our own. Links $ Patreon In no particular order: Carl Sagan What it means to be open was Lu's talk at Heart of Clojure Rudy Rucker Is the brain a digital computer? by John Searle The Plankth of time . C is Not a Low-Level Language by David Chisnall The Connection Machine!! Komgloverav… Komolgorov… Outer Worlds? Outer Wilds? The Witness Music featured in this episode: No! That's a spoiler. No way I'm telling you. ! Send us email , share your ideas in the Slack , and catch us while you still can: Carl: Mastodon • Website Jimmy: Mastodon • Website Lu: Mastodon &bull…

People in this episode

Hosts: Lu Wilson, Jimmy Miller, Ivan Reese

Topics covered

• philosophy
• computational theory
• universe as a computer
• automata
• Turing
• digital computation

Keywords

• universe
• computer
• Turing Guide
• philosophy
• computation
• automata
• digital computer

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Turing Guide, C is Not a Low-Level Language, The Connection Machine, Outer Worlds, Outer Wilds, The Witness

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